Dav Pilkey, Captain Underpants and the Sensational Saga of Sir Stinks-a-Lot (Captain Underpants #12), Scholastic Australia, 1 Sept 2015, 208pp., $14.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9780545504928
The Captain Underpants series is a very whacky part comic book and part novel series about two long suffering but very cool primary school boys named George and Harold who had previously played a part in turning their mean principal Mr Krupp into a super hero called Captain Underpants.
In this novel, George and Harold and the doubles, which they created using a time machine in the past, are living a pleasant life by swapping daily so that one of the sets of friends can play video games while the others go to school. This is disrupted when the boys’ evil gym teacher named Mr Meaner (say the name aloud), who has recently escaped from the Piqua Valley Home for the Reality-Challenged, creates a method of mind control that changes the original boys’ doubles and their fellow students into attentive obedient children who do whatever they are told.
Naturally this creates a number of problems for George and Harold which they resolve with enormous difficulty.
The Captain Underpants series has plenty of humorous techniques: toilet humour for boys and subtle jokes about science, philosophy and psychology for adults who may be reading this book aloud to their boys
There are also a number of interesting issues covered in this novel, particularly that:
- same sex marriage is fine and in fact will be so normal in the future that none of the characters will even comment on it, when they see it.
- smart people can make mistakes
- parents aren’t always right
- ADHD isn’t all bad
Scholastic has a number of web pages for teachers on how to use Captain Underpants books in the classroom. These include a classroom guide and a lesson plan.
The Captain Underpants books are suitable for children in the eight to 10 age range.
Reviewed by Katy Gerner